Friday, January 05, 2007

Reform, One Kid at a Time

On the way to our house the other night, a Liberian friend got hit in the head with a rock through his open car window. He stopped the car and tried to chase the kid who threw it, to no avail. Then the kid’s friends offered to help him find the kid, for a price (of course). He put the kids in the car (with no intention of paying them) and they took him to see the kid’s parents. He brought a policeman with him and they took the family to the station.

“My goal was not to get money from the family, and the rock didn’t hurt me, really. My goal was to teach the child a lesson. We have just come from a devastating war and children are on the loose. And if nobody does anything to control them, they will always act like wild animals. So when the child chunked me, it was not about the pain. It was about the corrective process.”